Posted on 11/16/2016 4:26:33 AM PST by Kaslin
News flash, kids: Things aren't free. Things cost money. And "free" things provided to you by the government cost other people's money.
Donald Trump gets it -- somewhat. He vows to repeal Obamacare's most burdensome federal mandates that are jacking up the price of private health insurance. But he also plans to preserve the most politically popular provisions of the Orwellian-titled Affordable Care Act, including the so-called "slacker mandate." It's the requirement that employer-based health plans cover employees' children until they turn 26 years old.
That's right: Twenty-freaking-six.
Is it any wonder why we have a nation of dependent drool-stained crybabies on college campuses who are still bawling about the election results one week later?
Trump briefly mentioned during a "60 Minutes" interview on CBS this weekend that the slacker mandate "adds cost, but it's very much something we're going to try and keep." That's because most establishment Republicans in Washington, D.C., are resigned to keeping it. Once the feds hand out a sugary piece of cradle-to-grave entitlement candy, it's almost impossible to snatch it back.
Who pays for this unfunded government mandate? As usual, it's responsible working people who bear the burden.
Earlier this year, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the No Slacker Left Behind provision resulted in wage reductions of about $1,200 a year for workers with employer-based insurance coverage -- whether or not they had adult children on their plans. In effect, childless working people are subsidizing workers with adult children who would rather stay on their parents than get their own.
Moreover, according to company surveys and other economic analysis, the slacker mandate has resulted in overall increased health care costs of between 1 and 3 percent. The nonpartisan American Health Policy Institute reported one firm's estimate of millennial coverage mandate costs at a whopping $69 million over 10 years.
At the time the federal slacker mandate was adopted in 2010, some 20 states had already adopted legislation requiring insurers to cover Big Kids -- some up to age 31!
Yes, thirty-freaking-one.
In Wisconsin, the slacker mandate covered not only adult children, but also the children of those "children" if they lived in single-parent homes. In New Jersey, champions of the provision claimed it would help cover 100,000 uninsured young adults. But health policy researcher Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Institute reported that "only 6 percent of that estimate has been realized" in its first two years. "The primary reason -- health insurance is still too expensive."
That has only gotten worse, of course, as Obamacare's other expensive mandates -- especially guaranteed issue for those with pre-existing conditions -- sabotage the private individual market for health insurance, leaving young and healthy people with fewer choices, higher premiums and crappier plans. The solution is not more mandates, but fewer; more competition, not less.
The Obama White House will brag that the slacker mandate has resulted in increased coverage for an estimated 3 million people. As usual with Obamacare numbers, it's Common Core, book-cooked math. Health care analyst Avik Roy took a closer look and found that the inflated figure came from counting "(1) young adults on Medicaid and other government programs, for whom the under-26 mandate doesn't apply; and (2) people who gained coverage due to the quasi-recovery from the Great Recession."
To add insult to injury, another NBER study found that roughly 5 percent of people younger than 26 dropped out of the workforce after the provision was implemented. They used their spare time to increase their socialization, sleeping, physical fitness and personal pursuit of "meaningfulness."
Then there are the hidden costs of the millennial mandate: the cultural consequences. All this "free" stuff, detached from those actually paying the bills, reduces the incentives for 20-somethings to grow up and seek independent lives and livelihoods. Why bother? The societal sanctions have been eroded.
Now, the nation is suffering the consequences of decades of that collective coddling. Precious snowflakes can't handle rejection at the ballot box or responsibilities in the marketplace. Appropriately enough, the new virtue signals of tantrum-throwing young leftists stirring up trouble are safety pins -- to show "solidarity" with groups supposedly endangered by Donald Trump.
Safety pins are also handy -- for holding up the government-manufactured diapers in which too many overgrown dependents are swaddled.
If Trump delivers just 25 percent of what he’s promised, and doesn’t actively promote any major leftist cause, I’ll be satisfied.
“Safety pin generation”...so appropriate for these big babies.
They should be called the “diaper pin generation” to signify that they are a bunch of crybabies.
Can’t share the details but in my offline life I’m having some trouble with butt hurt snowflakes and they can do significant damage to one’s livelihood and reputation.
The campaign is over but many of us must remain in “combat” mode because the opponents continue to attack, and they’re doing it in guerilla fashion as if the winners are invaders. :(
See #7.
just how much of a drain on actual health care resources does the up to 26 year old cost ?
Other than self inflicted damage, the 18 - 26 year old age group should be pretty robust, health-wise, should it not ?
When I was that age, most of my peers in NYC had absolutely no health insurance - they were actors waiting tables generally. I don’t remember one of them ever being sick outside of a cold.
No one who is being carried as a dependent on another’s taxes or insurance (unless disabled) should be allowed to vote.
If you want to claim status as a child, own it.
But their contributions pay for broken down old folks, like me.
They need to participate, so the parents do the paying.
>>In Wisconsin, the slacker mandate covered not only adult children, but also the children of those “children” if they lived in single-parent homes.
Which will of course tend to increase the number of single parent homes, which is always a good thing, right?
Who comes up with these policy ideas? Of yeah, Leftists (of both parties) without a clue about practical economics and human behavior.
By the age of 26 I had been half way around the world twice, was an E-5 in the Navy, and recruiter in charge of a 3 man recruiting station. I can’t understand where this 26 year old dependency BS comes from.
Now that we know that approx. 2/3 of anti-Trump protesters and rioters didn’t even vote in the presidential election, maybe those of us who did vote should treat them with a civil indifference because it’s legal and also because we shouldn’t care. All they have demonstrated is that they are not willing and/or able to put as much into life as they seem to expect to get out of tax-paying American citizens.
“Generation Snowflake”
No two “snowflakes” are NOT the same!
“just how much of a drain on actual health care resources does the up to 26 year old cost ?
Other than self inflicted damage, the 18 - 26 year old age group should be pretty robust, health-wise, should it not ? “
Not that much; this is true. More importantly, IMO, there are the principles involved. One is, that this age group was to be targeted and viciously snaked; by forcing them to pay into a warped system with the idea that since they would NOT draw on the system so heavily, that their contributions would be “free money” for rest of the system. Then we get into the notion that since they do not draw on the system much, let’s further force them to buy the same coverage a 60 y/o person would want or require. Then we could discuss that because we force them to buy deluxe coverage, employers will in effect reduce their wages or never hire them in the first place, as they become more expensive employees. Then, because they are earning less, their contributions become more onerous as a fraction of their earnings. This is targeting and “disproportionate outcomes” writ large. As a society, then, we are diminishing both the prospects for our younger members to achieve productivity and their own economic freedom. And then claiming we are doing something really, really cool. It’s a monstrous lie.
The ACA IMO has to be viewed not as a single dimension “oh this is good for that” bumper sticker, but as a rat’s nest of laws and directives written and imposed in the name of a liberal single-dimension mandate. It is a serious dent in so-called societal “progressivism” written in the main for the purpose of government taking over 1/6th of the overall economy. It is a piece of 85% negative, 15% positive vicious statism when viewed in terms of its overall effects. All of which were predicted in great specificity by some of the adults and lauded as a utopian outcome, looking only at the 15%, by the gimmes. This is a very standard and hackneyed characteristic of any number of these Marxist overlord deals.
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